|
Our
other mags
Main
Guidomedia index
|
Media trends digest
– June 2007
Revenge site spins a weird web 26 July
 From News Ltd: When Adriana Saw broke up with her Sydneysider boyfriend of 11 months, she decided to get back at him -- and his city.
She started a Melbourne is better than Sydney group on social networking website Facebook.
Word of mouth and Facebook's booming popularity has seen the group swell to more than 6000 members in four months.
Ed’s note: In fact this has started a whole raft of copy-cat ‘my city is better than yours’ sites, including one which is mis-spelled. Melbourne is better then Sydney has over 600 members.
Of course nutty groups and sites is the currency for networking sites, take for example I go out of my way to step on leaves that look particularly crunchy . It has a counter-site called I avoid the crunchy leaves in an attempt to be more stealthy and ninja-like.
However our favourite is Bosco the Melbourne standover pidgeon, on Myspace.
Athletes to blog
Australia’s 500 athletes will be allowed to blog during the Beijing Olympics, following a radical change of heart by the IOC.
The IOC Press Commission, chaired by Australian Kevan Gosper, is set to recommend that the IOC's powerful executive board drop its opposition to athletes writing blogs during the Games when it meets in November.
Story at The Australian
YouTube central to US elections
Considering that many political candidates are embracing the power of popular video-sharing Website, YouTube, it has evolved as an essential component in the upcoming 2008 US presidential election.
According to Reuters, about 2.5 million people have visited the I’ve Got a Crush…On Obama video since it was posted last month (see below). Other related activities involve holding polls to gather insights for the political campaigns as well as making some important announcements.
“In the past, the campaigns sort of stuck their toe into technology and innovation — it was a small detail of what was going on. The difference in this election is that technology has become fundamental. Every campaign has figured out ways to use YouTube all the time,” said PoliticsOnline founder Phil Noble.
Earlier, YouTube and CNN teamed up for video style presidential debates entitled The CNN-YouTube Debates.
Source: 901am
News Mags promises expansion
News Limited’s magazine stable, which was recently boosted with the acquisition of Federal Publishing, says it is likely to expand the business with new titles.
See the story from The Australian
Hyper local news the way of the future?
There has been a lot of activity in the nascent world of hyper-local news sites, which usually include a hefty amount of citizen journalism and participation. The venture-funded Backfence folded, but another hyper-local effort in Dallas called Pegasus News was recently sold to Fisher Communications, a Seattle company that runs TV and radio stations.
While Backfence had its start in the Washington, DC, suburbs, the Washington Post decided to launch its first hyper-local site in the suburbs of Loudoun County to sell to smaller advertisers while serving up more relevant news and guides for residents there. More via Bizjournals
Here’s the … whatever it is…
This just in! There's no more news on TV, at least not on the cable news networks. Plain old news apparently just isn't good enough anymore, so TV news stories have been getting new and improved names.
President Bush's latest news conference? CNN labels it a "Developing Story." A car bombing in Baghdad? The banner on MSNBC reads, "Breaking News." A blown transformer in New York City? Fox News Channel is on it, with a graphic that announces, "Very Latest."
Sometimes a story is a "News Alert." Sometimes it's a "Bulletin." And sometimes the banner reads, "New Developments" (although if there are new developments in a "Developing Story," shouldn't it really say "Developing Developing Story"?).
The dizzying world of news labels raises many questions. Is it possible for a "Developing Story" to become "Developed," like a Polaroid picture or a post-adolescent woman? Does "Breaking News" ever become "Broken" (and if so, can it be "fixed")?
And can a "Developing Story" ever morph into a "Breaking Story" and vice versa? Or are they like oil and water, matter and antimatter, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger?
Perhaps the biggest question is why the news needs such quickened-breath labels at all. Isn't all news just, you know, new information?
Washington Post
Phone company buys networking site
Here’s an interesting twist on merging media interests…
Twango, a small social media site based in Redmond, WA (which we have been using to upload and share the audio interviews we do here), has been bought by Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ), for a reported sum of about $96.8 million, WSJ reports.
The site allows users to share online audio, video, text, photos and other kinds of files, an all-in-one file sharing service. It was founded in 2004 by five former Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) senior managers and has 10 employees.
Nokia is likely to rebrand the Twango service and incorporate software into its phones to ease sending content between phones and online.
This is Nokia’s third digital media related acquisition in the last year since Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo took charge: digital-music distributor Loudeye for $60 million and a small German navigation-software company called gate5 for an undisclosed price.
Nokia has existing media sharing tieups with Flickr and SixApart’s Vox,, but it plans to continue these relationships in order to provide choice for customers.
Source: Forbes
Newspaper ‘investigation’ backfires
The Daily Mirror today furiously attacked British Transport Police for using the Terrorism Act to arrest two of its staff, saying it jeopardised the future of investigative journalism. Authorities released Mirror undercover reporter Tom Parry and photographer Roger Allen early this morning on bail, after British Transport Police used the act to arrest them at the Stonebridge Park rail depot in north-west London yesterday. The Mirror disputed yesterday's reports that the two journalists attempted to put a fake bomb on a Channel tunnel train, saying it was a "tracking device" and part of a series of investigations to test rail freight security.
Full story: Media Guardian
Good TV is deadly
The sister of a former district attorney who killed himself as police went to arrest him for suspected paedophilia has sued the television company that was filming the raid as part of a reality television show.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan, claims that when the victim shot himself, a police officer at the scene turned to a producer and said: "That'll make good TV."
Full story: Media Guardian
Packer bio to be re-edited
Paul Barry’s bio of late media tycoon Kerry Packer is to be re-edited and include more salacious detail on his private life.
The death of Packer and changes to defamation law means airing the stories is now less of a concern and details of his affairs – previously left out on the advice of lawyers – are to be included.
Mention of sexual favours handed out to business or political associates are also likely to be aired in The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer.
The rise and rise of citizen media 24 July
Citizen journalism or citizen media? It doesn’t really matter what you call it, the purpose behind it is the same – the public’s engagement in news-making. No longer happy to rely on broadcast and print media for news and information, people are taking advantage of the accessibility and immediacy of the Internet and other developing technologies, and using them to report news and express their opinions – whether this be via their own localised weblog or through texts, photos or live footage sent to big media. Ellen Fish reports...
Click to see the full feature
Spoof of the year 23 July
The winner so far is The Onion which reported on the crash of the internet, via the…yep, the internet. Despite watching it live on the web, many people believed it…
See this link
Traps online for pollies
Politicians who are rushing online as part of their electioneering are finding it a mixed blessing. From the Baltimore Sun in the USA: Using the internet during the current US election campaign: Never have so many candidates embraced such a wide range of new media and, in the process, so quickly transformed election politics. Their groundbreaking techniques aim to engage younger voters less reliant on traditional media, provide an unfiltered forum for candidates and reinvent fundraising.
At the same time, though, the candidates must struggle to control their messages in a Wild West environment where the public - and opponents - can "talk back" freely and quickly, as well as make videos that satirize the candidates. And while media and political analysts generally praise this new electronic environment's potential for re-energizing politics, they also warn of the challenges it poses for voters seeking information that can be trusted.
Full story
Telstra launches mobile TV
 Telstra has launched its 3G-based mobiule phone TV service.
The company claims: BigPond TV kicks off with on-demand access to more than 25 TV programs, including the brand new Australian made for mobile programs Big 5 and Girl Friday. It will also provide one-stop access to BigPond's line up of AFL, NRL and V8 Supercars shows and videos plus an exclusive 'behind-the-scenes' series from Silverchair. And that's just for starters as BigPond remains in negotiations with top studios to keep on adding to the range of shows.
The Australian newspaper reports: The mobile TV service could be offered for free if the carrier can attract enough customers to it Next G mobile network to convince advertisers to support it, Telstra BigPond group managing director Justin Milne said.
"I think there's a good argument that ad-supported content on the internet and on mobiles is the general sort of direction that we're heading in," Mr Milne said.
Telstra's Next G audience was still small but growing rapidly, he said.
With Next G subscriptions growing at over 100,000 per month, "all of our customers will be on Next G phones within a blink of an eye and when we do (reach that point) then we can have a look at the ad-supported model", he said.
Full report at The Australian
E-paper to boom
The market value for e-paper is predicted to double from £980m (US$2bn) in 2012 to £1.98bn in 2014 as products take over shop shelves and point-of-purchase (PoP) displays.
Research group NanoMarkets expects a race to market for the technology, with a land grab expected in core sectors, such as signage. Companies that put affordable colour devices into early production are likely to take the lion's share, it claimed.
The group expects e-paper to earn £590m by 2014 from the signage market alone, which it describes as a "tremendous opportunity". Other markets include disposable electronics and mobile phone displays.
Source: Print Week
Integration march continues
Editorial staff at News International's four daily and Sunday titles in the UK are to be "fully integrated" across the online and print teams, executive chairman Les Hinton has told staff.
Mr Hinton said Times Online is planning to make its full archive available to the public, which would include stories going as far back as 1788 when the Times was first published.
Source: Media Guardian
Murdoch and the war
In final days leading up to the Iraq war,
then-UK prime minister Tony Blair spoke three times
with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose newspapers
and broadcast outlets were among the strongest
supporters of launching the war, the government
has revealed. The government, in responding to a
freedom of information request filed by an
opposition lawmaker, didn't say what Blair and
Murdoch discussed in the three telephone
conversations. But the timing of them is likely
to renew speculation about the extent of
Murdoch's influence in the former UK government.
Murdoch's UK newspapers -- including The Sun and
The Times -- had been crucial supporters of Blair
since he took office in 1997, and were staunch supporters of the Iraq war.
Source: Dow Jones
More info does not equal more knowledge
(Opinion) Today's news world is a political
junkie's oyster. Cable TV offers CNN, Fox News,
MSNBC and C-SPAN. The Washington Post, BBC
online, The Note and many, many more news web
sites are only a click away. But that's where
they remain for many Americans. Decades into the
"information age," the public is as uninformed as
before the rise of cable television and the
Internet. Greater access to media, ironically,
has reduced the share of Americans who are
politically informed. The most significant effect
of more media choice is not the wider
dissemination of political news but mounting
inequality in political involvement.
Source: Washington Post
Depression for US newspapers?
(Opinion) Which major American newspaper
should be the first to throw up its hands and
stop publishing a print product? It's a question
worth asking. This could be the worst year for
newspapers since the Great Depression. The
double-digit revenue declines long forecast by
doomsters have arrived. While nearly all the
major papers still post profits, albeit smaller
than before, a few prominent ones are losing boatloads.
Source: Business Week
Good times for US mag publishers
Just to prove there is some good news in the world of print media: total magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue for the first half of 2007 increased 6.1% compared to the same six-month period last year, closing at $11,838,362,224, according to Publishers Information Bureau.
Full release
Coming events from the MEAA
Journalism Convention - Registrations now open for Regional Journalism Convention, October 27, Ballarat. Speakers include 2006 Walkley-winner Anthony Radford from The Bendigo Weekly, ABC's Kathy Bedford and The Australian's Cameron Stewart. Details at http://regional.alliance.org.au.
Courts And The Media - The CMCL and the Australian Press Council are hosting a one-day conference, The Courts and the Media, on Friday 27 July at the Melbourne Law School. Free registration for Alliance members. For details email Amy Harrington a.harrington@unimelb.edu.au
Western Sahara Talk - Malainin Lakhal, a journalist from the Western Sahara and the Secretary General of the Saharawi Journalists and Writers Union, will be speaking at the Travellers Bookstore (Melbouren) at 2.00pm on Sunday, July 29. Please RSVP to claire@travellersbookstore.com
Barrister uses media to counter leaks 19 July
Dr Mohamed Haneef's barrister Stephen Keim has fought fire with fire by releasing the transcript of a police interview with his client to The Australian newspaper.
Today the paper reports: Mr Keim issued a press release identifying himself as the source of the material provided to The Australian, an action he said he had undertaken only after criticism by AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty and John Howard.
The Prime Minister said the publication of the interview had not helped justice and that the leaker should be condemned, while Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the publication had the potential to delay the case.
Full story
Net TV assaults free-to-air
A handful of companies are preparing for a full-scale, global assault on the way TV is viewed through the internet, mixing the speed of broadband with the peer-to-peer file-sharing processes that helped launch the music piracy industry, and all of it bankrolled by international advertisers.
Joost is the name that has captured the most attention since it announced four months ago that it would begin beta trials of its 150-channel strong global TV network. The Netherlands company was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of file-sharing system Kazaa who went on to create voice over internet protocol company Skype.
Full story (Australian)
Broadband flourishes but doesn’t hurt TV
According to “A Barometer of Broadband Content and Its Users,” an estimated 81 million people, or 63% of daily Internet users, reported that they watch broadband video at work or home. That level increased by 16% in just six months. 33% said watching video via the Internet increased their overall viewing time, while 13% said they were watching less television in favor of broadband content. The top destinations for online streaming? ABC.com for television shows and Yahoo Movies for theatrical releases.
Full story at Multichannel
Australian film online
You can now access Australia's audiovisual heritage free via the internet following the launch of the Australian Film Commission's ground-breaking digital resource, australianscreen online, by the Minister for Communications, Senator Helen Coonan.
This $2.4m initiative offers unparalleled access to a vast collection of excerpts of Australian feature films, television drama, documentaries, newsreels and other historical material gathered both from the rich collections of the AFC's partners in australianscreen online including the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Archives of Australia, the ABC, SBS and AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) as well as from Australia's independent production sector.
"Australia has a rich cinematic and television history. The Federal Government is pleased to support this state-of-the-art digital resource and congratulates the AFC and all its partners for creating australianscreen online. Now for the first time, all Australians regardless of where they live can access and explore this heritage. australianscreen online will also provide a platform for us to showcase our cultural history to the rest of the world," Senator Coonan said.
australianscreen online is a constantly expanding website presenting moving image clips from more than 500 feature films, television drama, documentaries, newsreels, short films, animations and home movies produced in Australia over the last 100 years. Included in this diverse collection are clips from the most recent Australian feature films Romulus My Father and Clubland as well as an amazing collection of curated historical footage that has previously never been freely available to the public. The website also provides interesting information about the programs, the key creatives involved and curators' notes.
Australian Film Online
Murdoch getting close to Dow Jones purchase
He'll take The Wall Street Journal for $5 billion, please.
Australian tycoon and media mogul Rupert Murdoch is one step closer to owning the crown jewel of the journalism industry, with a takeover that is raising eyebrows from Dow Jones to the larger media world.
The board of Dow Jones said late Tuesday it was ready to sign off on Murdoch's proposal to buy the company for $5 billion.
Source: ABC USA
Online China to overtake USA
The number of Internet users in China has reached 137 million, and with double-digit annual growth projected, the country is poised to overtake the United States in total number of users within a few years, a researcher said. Based on figures supplied by the China Network Information Center, the country's Internet population grew by 18% in 2004 and 2005, and 23% in 2006, the Pew Internet & American Life Project said in a recent report. Those numbers translate into 26 million new users in 2006, and 57 million over the last three years.
By comparison, growth in the United States, which has reached a far greater level of maturity in Internet use, has amounted to between 7 million and 9 million adults and teenagers since 2005. The total number of Internet users in the United States today is estimated at 165 million to 210 million, with current growth rates not expected to change much. The CNNIC, on the other hand, expects China's growth to remain in the double digits, driving the number of Web users to 210 million by the beginning of 2009, the Pew report said.
While 71% of Americans age 18 and over use the Internet, only about 10% of China's population is online. The Chinese users are relatively young, male, urban, and are disproportionately composed of students, the report said. Specifically, 70% are under the age of 30 and nearly 60% are men. The penetration rate in urban areas is about 20%, compared with just over 3% in rural areas. Bridging the rural/urban digital divide is an ongoing initiative for the Chinese government.
Source: Information Week
China Network Information Centre
US junk food ads to be self-regulated
Trying to persuade critics the industry does not need government regulation, 11 big food companies, including McDonald’s, Campbell Soup and PepsiCo, have agreed to stop advertising to children under 12 products that do not meet certain nutritional standards. Some of the companies, like Coca-Cola, have already withdrawn all such commercials or are in the process of doing so. Others, like General Mills, said they would withdraw them over the next year or so, while a handful agreed to expand their self-imposed bans to radio, print and Internet advertising.
Source: NY Times
Germany to launch Death Channel
A round-the-clock television channel devoted exclusively to ageing, dying and death is to be launched in Germany.
Eos TV will feature documentaries about graveyards, televised obituaries, tips on finding a decent retirement home and even how to install in-house stair lifts.
Wolf Tilmann Schneider, 51, a former TV producer, has joined forces with Germany's funeral association to launch the 24-hour, seven days a week channel on cable television and the internet.
He said: "More than 800,000 people died in Germany last year.
Multiply that by four and you have a rough estimate of the number of relatives affected.
"They will be our target audience. We are convinced that Eos TV will attract viewers."
Source: Telegraph UK
Economist wires for sound 12 July
 The Economist is launching an online audio version of every issue of the magazine, to meet the needs of subscribers with no time to read.
The weekly said it was the first leading international publication to offer a full audio edition. From this week listeners will be able to scroll through the Economist and download audio versions of articles by section or in its entirety.
The magazine, which has a worldwide print circulation of 1,197,712, said the audio service would be free to subscribers. Non-subscribers can buy each issue for UK£4.00.
Full story in The Guardian
AFL brawl video may be contempt of court
A lawyer representing Brisbane Lions' Brownlow medallists Michael Voss and Simon Black has labelled leaked video footage of a Melbourne pub brawl as ''hugely prejudicial'' to his clients.
Full story in The Australian
From Queen to Stardust
Former Queen guitarist Brian May has finished his PhD thesis, on the topic of stardust, 36 years after he began it.
The recent discovery of his old notes in his loft encouraged the 59-year-old to get on and finish the job. He was awarded the degree by the Imperial College in London.
Would you really call this a win?
Springfield in Vermont has won a national competition in the USA, seeking the Springfield (there are 14 of them) most like that in the cartoon series The Simpsons.
Apparently the winner pulled ahead because it had its own nuclear powerplant. It will now host the premiere of the Simpsons movie.
A sloppy melodrama
(Opinion) The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary to be screened by the ABC tonight is a bizarre mix of widely accepted facts, errors, half-truths and irrelevancies...
Full story at The Age
One in four web users are gamers
The latest comScore data shows a peak in online gaming which now accounts for 28% of global web users. That excludes gambling but includes sites that offer downloads or web-based gaming. Yahoo Games was the most visited site during May with 53m unique users internationally. MSN Games had 40m uniques, but both offer fairly "lite" gaming options like trivia, arcade, puzzle and card games. The fastest growing site was the WildTangent Network which grew by 398% from May last year to 11.5m uniques in May 2007. In the small print, comScore lists the world's web population as 771m, of which 216.7m use online games sites.
Source: Guardian media blog
Fairfax turns to net radio
Fairfax Digital is set to become the pace-setter in online radio with the ability to leverage content, personalities and advertising from Austereo's Triple M and Today networks, as well as Southern Cross Broadcasting's metropolitan talk stations, following deals with the two companies in the past eight months.
Those deals will give Fairfax access to a broader national advertising audience and the significant revenues expected to be generated by online radio properties within the next two years.
Full story at The Australian
Yahoo launches custom ads
The promise of the "Long Tail" is that the Internet can serve up niche content and products tailored to small groups of people rather than broad-based mainstream products. But what does that mean for advertising? Yahoo believes it can help create a "Long Tail" of customized ads with its new SmartAds service, which allows advertisers to create custom display ads based on a visitor's demographic and recent web usage. "We do behavioural targeting now," Yahoo's Guade Paez told News.com. "This makes display [advertising] more of a direct-response vehicle than just branding." The ad would be custom-designed for each viewer, with background colors, logos and offers specific to that person's needs and location.
While SmartAds make sense in theory, the problem is that in practice ad agencies and advertisers would have to consider endless possibilities for creative. "For years, creative staff at ad agencies have worked to come up with the few ads – or sometimes the one ad -- that encapsulate a brand or product message," wrote Louise Story at the New York Times. "But targeting different messages to different people will require endless versions of ads, and technology that splices and dices footage every which way." For now, Yahoo is only offering the ads on Yahoo sites to certain travel-related advertisers, but will branch out into different verticals and serve ads onto more sites through its RightMedia purchase.
Source: Online Publishers Association
A different kind of porn
USA Today (Opinion): The Four Fs -- Food, Fashion, Fitness and Finances -- masquerade as news, blotting out information we really need. Maybe it's a conspiracy and maybe it's a coincidence, but as F-Porn expands across the shelf, the information we need to know about the political process, the conduct of the war, the state of the environment, health care and education becomes harder and harder to find. Now, isn't that obscene?
Full story
US teen news consumption is low -- Harvard
 Most of America’s teens and young adults do not follow the daily news closely, according to a new report released today by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government.
The report, titled Young People and News, is based on a national sample survey of 1800 Americans that included teens (ages 12-17), young adults (ages 18-30), and older adults. The sample is noteworthy for its inclusion of teenage respondents, who’ve seldom been polled nationally on their news habits.
Although some observers claim that 9/11 and the Iraq conflict have sparked unusually high levels of interest in current affairs among the upcoming generation of citizens, the survey does not support the claim, at least in the context of attention to daily news coverage. Teens are significantly less attentive to daily news than young adults, who in turn pay substantially less attention than older adults. The survey found, in fact, that 28 percent of teens pay almost no attention to daily news and that an additional 32 percent are casually attentive to a single source only. Taken together, 60 percent of teens can be considered basically inattentive to daily news, as compared with 48 percent of young adults and only 23 percent of older adults.
Despite their stated preference for Internet-based news, teens and young adults were found to be twice as likely to get daily news from television. Moreover, despite claims that young Americans rely heavily on non-traditional television programs, such as Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, such programs are not a significant source of day-to-day news for the large majority of America’s teens and young adults. When teens and young adults turn to television for news, most of them rely on the same sources as older Americans — broadcast and cable newscasts. The difference is that older Americans are twice as likely as young adults and teens to regularly watch television news daily.
The Internet is making inroads as a news source. Relative to other media, teens and young adults make more use of Internet-based news than do older adults. The caveat is that overall interest in news is so much lower among younger Americans that Internet-based news, in absolute terms, gets roughly the same attention from older adults as it does from young adults and teens.
Full story at Harvard
Newspapers lose most dollars to Net
From Editor & Publisher via Benton: Newspapers are losing the most ad dollars to the Internet compared to other media, according to a new report from Wachovia Equity Research. Wachovia Senior Analyst John Janedis and his team analyzed 100 leading national advertisers to determine the shift away from traditional media to the Internet. Specifically, the team looked at 55 of those advertisers that fell in the following categories: automotive, retail, telecommunications, financial services, general services, media, and tech/Internet. Of those seven categories, only one – financial services -- increased spending in newspapers.
Television, the study noted, actually experienced the opposite trend with four of the seven categories including telecommunications, automotive, media and tech/Internet, increasing the amount of dollars spent the medium. Looking at the seven categories collectively, newspapers lost 14.3% in advertising dollars in 2006 while TV gained 4.4%. The Internet experienced a rise of 17.8% in spending while ad spending on other measured channels fell 1.1%.
More
Nielsen adds time online to ratings
AP, via Benton: A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the long-time industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites. The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected to be announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful. Although Nielsen already measures average time spent and average number of sessions per visitor for each site, it will start reporting total time spent and sessions for all visitors to give advertisers, investors and analysts a broader picture of what sites are most popular.
Nielsen release
Will the iPhone change web publishing?
OPA (Opinion): Perhaps the most hyped consumer gadget ever, the iPhone finally was released to long lines and adoring Apple fans. Next came the reviews, which were glowing for the iPhone's touch screen and interface and less-than-glowing for the slow connection speeds through AT&T and high price. So what does the shiny smartphone mean for publishers? Many analysts predict the iPhone will be a catalyst for change within the smartphone business, meaning mainstream acceptance for Net content on cell phones. That, in turn, means publishers will have to plan for more mobile visitors, either serving up better mobile sites or specialized content. "The launch of the iPhone signals a new dawn in media," wrote Kevin Wassong on MarketWatch. "It's the true dawn of the Handheld Media Revolution...From this point forward, you will get the kind of information and entertainment the way you want it, when and where you want it on any kind of device."
One of the big problems with the iPhone out of the gate is its connection speed on AT&T's Edge network. Apple decided not to go with AT&T's 3G network because it wasn't as widespread in the US and would eat up battery life. "Edge is good, but you'd like it to be faster," Apple honcho Steve Jobs told the New York Times. "I'm sure that will all change in the future." Reuters reported that many people are waiting for the next version of the iPhone that would be on a faster network, and perhaps at a lower price. But Macworld's Dan Frakes compared the initial iPhone problems with those of another revolutionary Apple product, the iPod, in its early days. "Whatever your initial impression, the more you use it, the more you appreciate it -- and the more you wonder how you got along without it," he concluded.
More reading
Wired magazine
Marketwatch
Fairfax & Macquarie carve up Southern Cross 7 July
Fairfax Media and Macquarie Bank's media arm are poised for Australia's first cross-media deal - and the most expensive in the current round of media takeovers - with a joint bid valuing Southern Cross Broadcasting at up to $1.3 billion.
Full story in The Australian
Southern Cross
So who killed Channel 9?
(Opinion) Gerald Stone’s book Who Killed Channel 9? paints a portrait of a network which went downhill with breathtaking speed once former PBL owner Kerry Packer began to succumb to ill health towards the end of his life. It describes a company riven by internal politics, to the detriment of the business. In turn this opened the door for Channel 7 to take the lead in the ratings war – in fact 7 seems to be becoming the new 9.
Network 9 will hate the book, as it describes a company which would-be suppliers producers and staffers might want to steer clear of…
It also happens to be a good read which provides an interesting insight into the TV business.
Also…
Just days after the release of Who Killed Channel 9? The death of Kerry Packer's mighty TV dream machine, a right royal battle escalated between author Gerald Stone and the Sunday program's executive producer John Lyons.
Full story
Where we get our news
Only 17% (down 1% since August 2004) of Australians aged 14 and over think the media is doing a “good” job “covering elections and controversial topics without bias”, 52% (unchanged) think the media is doing a “fair” job, 27% (down 1%) think the media is doing a “poor” job while 4% are undecided, a special Roy Morgan telephone survey on the image of the media finds.
In regards to “keeping Australians informed on subjects that Australians should know about”, now only 28% (down 5% since August 2004) said the media was doing a “good” job compared to 24% (up 2%) who think the media is doing a “poor job”.
Television remains the main source of international and domestic news and current affairs: 53.5% (down 2.5%) say TV is their main source for Australian news and current affairs, with that figure rising to 62.5% (down 3.5%) for international news and current affairs.
Newspapers remain the next popular medium, relied upon by 20.5% (down 1.5%) for Australian news and 13.5% (down 3.5%) for International news, and with Radio relied upon by 18% for Australian news and 11% for International news.
A growing number of Australians are relying upon the Internet as their main source of news and current affairs: 9.5% (up 6.5%) for Australian news and 13% (up 8%) for International news.
The Internet’s growing popularity becomes even more apparent when the results are analysed by age: 15% of 14-17 year olds, 11% of 18-24 year olds, 16% of 25-34 year olds and 11% of 35-49 year olds said the Internet was their main source of Australian news and current affairs. This compares to just 6.5% of those aged 50-64 and 1% of the 65+ age group.
This trend was similar with International news and current affairs: 18% of Australians aged 14-17 named the Internet as their main source of International news and current affairs, 23.5% of 18-24 year olds, 19% of 25-34 year olds. This compares to 7.5% of the 50-64 year olds and just 1% of those aged 65+.
Morgan
BBC plans southern expansion
BBC Worldwide has set its sights on significant expansion in the Australian market after posting record pre-tax profits in its annual review for 2006-07.
Full story in The Australian
Seven eyes Emap after $90m Time deal
The Australian: Nick Chan was keeping his wallet open after forking out about $90 million for Time Inc's four Australian titles this week, with the Pacific Magazines boss also eyeing Emap's titles, should they become available.
Full story
Bloggers recognised at Beijing Games
Non-accredited media people from all around the world are also welcome to cover the Olympic Games, said an official yesterday.
The Beijing Organizing Committed for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) and Beijing government are busy preparing a press center for the non-accredited media.
According to the Games regulations, the non-accredited media will not enjoy the same rights as those who have received accreditation. They will not be allowed to enter Olympic venues, take the media shuttle buses, or use the Olympic information system, Info 2008.
"We are paying attention to the non-accredited media and we're trying to provide as many services as possible in the press center," deputy director of BOCOG media and communication department, Wang Hui, said.
Source: China Daily
Movavi launches free video conversion 5 July
Feedblitz: Movavi today launched Movavi Online, a web-based service that enables users to convert video from one format to another – for sharing, podcasting, cellphones, iPods, and more – for free.
Because it’s online, there is no software for users to install. Instead, the service converts video uploaded from any Windows, Mac or Linux-based PC with access to the Internet via a Web browser. Users simply upload a file, choose the desired output format, and provide an email address. When complete, Movavi uses the email address to notify users when and where they can download their converted files. The process usually takes less than a day, and users may convert up to five 10-minute, 100MB clips during one session. The service supports a range of popular video formats, including AVI, MP4, MPEG 2 (PAL and NTSC), MPEG 4, iPod at 320×240, iPod 5G at 640×480, PSP, 3gp and 3gp2 for cellphones, MOV for podcasting, and FLV Flash video.
Movavi also offers at no charge six different widgets with which bloggers, designers, developers, individuals and companies may embed a line of code in order to offer video conversion services from their own Web sites, blogs and social networking pages.
Movavi
Grim forecasts for US papers
Editor’s Weblog: Media forecasters are trading their initial predictions for industry growth in 2007 for lower percentages, citing online growth that is still insufficient to cover losses in print revenue.
In his 2007 prognosis, Goldman Sachs’ media analyst Peter Appert projects a 4.4% drop since last year in US newspaper ad revenue, with a 10.8% loss in classified and 5% in national advertising.
Full story
 Return
to top
See
our media trends archive for earlier stories. See our Benton
index for USA media stories.
Use this tool to search
our site or the web.
|
Job
Watch
See
our jobs page.
Free
Newsletter
Try our newsletter. Every week or so we email a free summary of media
trends stories and jobs. See our subscription page.
Movers
& shakers
See our selection of speeches & papers on media
issues... click
Spin
City
The Editor's occasional blog… click
|
